English: people don’t usually kiss themselves!

Question

Comment: This may be grammatically correct in French, but in English, if you say that two people are ‘kissing themselves’, that would literally mean that each of them is kissing their OWN bodies (or parts of), And of course, this would be bizarre.

Answer

Unusual, but possible! Acting training, perhaps?

I think the point is to highlight that a pronominal is part of a reflexive verb, and also found in a reciprocal situation, so context is important. English is also full of statements that can be ambiguous, but often aren’t because one meaning is much more likely than another. In other circumstances, either context or further clarification is needed.

Best, I think to treat the example as a somewhat odd memory prompt for potential ambiguous circumstances.